ANST - Musicians

[Scott Powers]

>     But once the autocrat made the announcement that the hall was
>closing, we only had time for one more dance. Somehow we came to
>conclusion that the musicians were already packing up their instruments
>and that, if we wanted to do the last dance, it would have to be to a
>tape. I will quiz the other dancing masters about this, but in the
>meantime, pray accept my apologies for not asking the musicians if they
>would play the last dance!!

You are quite right.  The musicians had been told we were shutting down.
Some in fact were out the door before Korabushka was even started.   But
understand, this is not a criticism of anyone.  We were all pretty tired,
but were prepared to play as long as we were wanted.  We just didn't know
you wanted to do one last song until it was too late.

Really though, I think you missed my point.  My note was about the
difference between live music and taped music.  When I came in earlier in
the event, the dancing class was going full-tilt in the foyer to taped
music.  And I remember thinking it sounded pretty good (and the dancers
were doing quite well also).  But after we shut down at midnight and the
taped music started up, the difference in sound between the taped and live
music was pretty dramatic.  My point is that when people are tired at the
end of a long evening, the difference between taped and live music can
spell the difference between a fun dance and, as someone in a previous post
described it, "DoA".  It just works better with live music.  Not to
complain about taped music.  It has its place.  Its just better to have
live music.



>     We had quite a large band show up and they were wonderful!!! Thanks
>to HL Clare Margaret for organizing the band!

Kudo's to HL Claire Margaret!  She had to do a tremendous amount of
prodding, cajoling, and begging to get all the musicians there.  You have
to understand that some of the musicians that play around here are not
stricly SCAdians in the strictest sense.  They show up at events to
perform, then go home.  Some of them have no interest in feasts, or lists,
or court, or awards, or sitting around the campfire, or anything else that
many people think of when planning on going to events.  These people are
very interested in early music, study it extensively in avenues other than
the SCA, and are willing to perform at SCA events.  But sometimes they have
a hard time understanding how the SCA works.

For example, they might be asked to come play at an event.  They show up in
the middle of the afternoon, pay their site fee (for the priviledge of
performing for someone else's amusement), wait around through feast, then
court, and sometime post court activities before getting to play.  As it
happens, at the event described above, we did not actually get to start
performing till about 10:30 pm.  That is after some of these folks go to
bed.

Now everyone, particularly the dancers, were very appreciative of the
musicians coming out to play, and several said so.  But it helps if you
understand that many instrumental musicians at SCA events are not really
SCA people, and try to schedule the use of musicians accordingly.

In any case, Vivat to Claire Margaret for pushing so hard to get that many
musicians of that caliber together in one place, with the appropriate music
rehearsed in advance.  No small task.



>    (now, the musicians *are* all planning on showing up at
>     Winterkingdom and at Northern Regional where we'll have more
>     dancing without the bother of the site closing at midnight, aren't
>     all of you wonderful musicians???)

I expect there will be some musicians, at least at Northern Regional, and
probably at Winterkingdom as well.  And it is OK to schedule dancing a
little earlier in the evening so the poor, tired musicians can go home; and
the dancers can get more than an hour and a half of dancing.

Rumil


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